Facade

You might fall through.

The longer I am here the more I notice fiberboard beneath the exotic veneer. Every door knob, front gate, window frame, tasseled pillow, tiled floor, painted ceiling, curtained alcove, upholstered chaise, bejeweled abaya, shapely armoire, marble staircase, balustered balcony, crown-molded corner, inlayed table, stained glass window is a façade. Literally. There is no quality, no real substance or sustenance. Look with even the slightest curiosity and the ugliness shows. There are cracks in the tile and the slabs of marble aren’t flush, white spackle is flaking off the outer walls near swamp coolers. The fabric is running and you might fall through.

Here they gilt their garbage.

I may be in the center of the room, but I’m not in the center of the conversation. "Tony" and "Christopher" sit before me, "AJ" and their friend behind. I am not looked at, I am not addressed, there is no translation. They are deciding among themselves what internet system/service I am going to purchase. THEY are deciding. "Tony" tells us to get ready to go to City Center, but once we arrive the internet kiosk is vacant, it being so near to Iftar. They talk amongst themselves. I push my way to the counter and "Tony" hands me an Oman Mobile brochure.
If these men only knew all the billions of things I have accomplished all by my itty bitty female self. But this is the Gulf. And that is irrelevant.

A news story comes on concerning the uproar made by an Islamic Sudanese woman over the “10 lashes” she was sentenced to receive for wearing trousers. I ask "Tony" how the Sudanese government is able to justify the immodesty of pants by way of Islamic law. He explains that God calls for modesty in order for women to express respect for their own bodies, but more importantly, to quell any potential for temptation from a man toward the opposite sex. If a woman is forcibly “sought after”, "Tony" says he can tell her why. Obviously she makes herself “open to men”. “But trousers cover the same parts of the body as skirts,” I offer. In the most round-about and indecipherable phrasing possible, he replies, “No, because there, the areas that I would find tempting would be there.”

So here is the take-away point kiddo: pursuance, attacks, sexual assault, rape, etc occur because SHE ASKED FOR IT. The man is in no way to blame, I mean really, what can be expected? Self-restrain? Come on, he’s completely innocent in this, it’s those damn whoring gals swingin’ their swag all over the durn place…

I sat on that couch and watched his face and his eyes. I bit my tongue; I have to play the game. But while to me it’s just that, a game, a great exhibition of pretend, it isn’t to them.
It took 4 full days but I eventually got up the nerve to ask "Carmela" whether I would be allowed to go for jogs. I could think of few things else. When you spend every second either at home, school or being shuttled between the two, even the most menial and tawdry of free acts becomes a precious gift. The first thing she said was, “You want to run? Why?” And the second thing she said was that I could go either in the early morning or the evening. Yesterday morning when I opened the front gate, tennis shoes in tow, I felt that I had just been granted absolute pardon. I was “free”.

Last night we went to my aunt’s house to break fast, they are the family who also have a student staying with them ("Roe"). My throat is constantly sore because of the endless air conditioning. "Roe" and I flipped through an Arabian fashion magazine, the first we have seen since arrival. All the runway pieces are modest, all the advertisements fully covered, and if there were any question, the magazine editors took the liberty of essentially “filling in” skin baring areas with black censor-tape. If the dress was originally off the shoulder, it now has a gaudy make-shift black strap where there was only skin before. If it’s too low cut, too revealing in the back, too short, all errors have been corrected with a bold, black cure-all.

Does exposing the body to a ridiculous extreme invite loss of dignity for the individual? Do I, in my usual western garb, have less respect for myself and thus make myself “open to men”?

Does hiding the body to a ridiculous extreme instill a sense of shame for the individual? Will my sister "Meadow" grow up feeling that her body is embarrassing, that it is taboo?

Seeing those painstakingly designed pieces so callously converted to hide what is meant to be seen as beautiful was obnoxious.

The little girls brought us plates of flan-like cake into "Roe's" room where we were resting. Quietly, "Roe" and I wrapped up the spongy squares and threw them in the bathroom trash. I tried to sleep again, flitting in and out and not getting home till nearly midnight.

Today I stretched across a loft-sofa after lunch, air conditioner off, drowsing on my elongated arm. Wadding through the outer membrane of a dream, the phrase “foon-dook careem” assembled itself and set on repeat. When translated it means “kind hotel”.